Introduction

Portfolio and Promotion

This Blog

The purpose of this blog is to organise how I promote my work as an Illustrator. I will use this space to document my efforts and my progress and record everything that can be useful to me in the future. I will be looking at the work of others, how they have promoted their work. I will look at physical and online work, portfolios, creative promotional items as well as generic.

 The blog is organised coherently, please click the tabs at the top to access different areas and genres of development, as well as to see my web presence (website/portfolio/fb/deviant art etc). I do not expect to suddenly gain work from doing this blog. My presence is not yet great enough that people will be viewing my work that much, however, I do expect that this will be somewhat rectified with the completion of this blog. This should be ongoing, I can always refer back to it and in the future, I hope the research and documentation found on this blog will aid and guide me.

About Me

My name is Victoria Upson. Although I am studying Illustration I have any ambitions within and outside of that specific area of the arts. I am very inspired an interested in pre 1960's cinema and the lavish sets and costumes of the great movie musicals of the 40' and 50's. My guilty pleasure is the 'Gainsborough Movie,' early hyperbolic, sinister melodramas made between the late 30's and early 50's.  Their unabashedly extravagant mis-en-scene and corrupt characters have influenced my story-telling techniques and enriched the underlying 'Gothic' of my work.

I have taken part in Exhibitions at Worcester Cathedral, 'The Kestrel Gallery' as well as other small galleries in Worcestershire and exhibitions for the 'Worcestershire Arts Council.'   I have experience in tattoo, logo and front cover design, wall-art, mural painting and storyboarding for film and am currently working on a fashion portfolio as well as a series of Fairy Tale based comic books for 'grown-ups.’  Fairy Tales are my greatest passion and primary influence, their themes can be drawn of my work stretching across the broadest spectrum, from doll-making to fashion to animation.  I am specifically intent on highlighting the adult and contemporary themes that can be found in their pages.

What do I want to gain from this module?

I want to take away a knowledge of how to promote the broad spectrum of my work whether it be my craft/toy based models or my fashion pursuits. I think I can learn to tailor how I promote myself (both online and on-paper) according to the areas of the creative industry I am interested in working in. I also want to learn simple technical things; how to set out my CV, what to include and for whom? In doing this I may learn more about computer programmes and how to set things out using a computer programme. My research into artists should inspire to try new things, gain new knowledge about the industry as a whole as also what to avoid when I comes to promotion.

In the future I will use this blog, can keep referring to its contents, research and documentation. If I could be doing anything in the future as a result of this preparation and research I would be working for Disney or DreamWorks’s. However, I have many ambitions, some including fashion, some editorial based and some in film. However and wherever I am working in the future I will be glad to be doing something creative and this is what I am hoping to gain from this module.